Benedict Cumberbatch Is Julian Assange In The Fifth Estate Trailer

Benedict Cumberbatch is continuing his rise as a big screen star in 2013, as DreamWorks Pictures has released the first trailer for director Bill Condon's upcoming Julian Assange biopic The Fifth Estate.

Scripted by Josh Singer (a writer on The West Wing, Lie To Me and Fringe) and based on three separate books about Assange written by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Luke Harding and David Leigh, the new film centers on the relationship between the WikiLeaks founder (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) and Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Bruhl), an early supporter and colleague. As the website grows and sends shockwaves around the world, the bond between the two men is stretched to its limits.

Watching the trailer and thinking about the plot, I can't help but make comparisons to David Fincher's The Social Network. The big difference, of course, is that the website at the center of one plot allows users to update their relationship status while the one in the other allows them to view classified government documents. It's also hard not to notice that this trailer is premiering at a perfect time, with news continuing to arise about Eric Snowden and the NSA's breach of privacy.

In addition to the new trailer, the studio has also sent out some brand new stills from the movie. You can check them out below and click each one to see it in its highest resolution.

With the summer season coming to an end next month, we've started to get a good whif of the upcoming Oscar Season. The Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals will premiere some of the biggest heavyweights that will be duking it out for golden statues, but studios have already begun giving us a preview of exactly what they have coming down the pipe. In the last week alone we've seen the release of trailers for films like Saving Mr. Banks, Out of the Furnace, Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom and 12 Years A Slave (which also happened to feature Cumberbatch), and this Fifth Estate trailer definitely continues the trend. Interestingly, these titles are scattered all over the release schedule for the next few months, so it's even kind of hard to predict what hopeful Oscar contender will be showing off their goods next.

The Fifth Estate also stars Laura Linney, Stanley Tucci, Anthony Mackie, David Thewlis, Peter Capaldi, Dan Stevens, Alicia Vikander and Carice van Houten and will be out in theaters on October 11th.